If you were one of those many people out there who got more gift cards than game boxes under their Christmas trees, there is not usually much in terms of good video games to spend them on. Lucky for us the folks over at Capcom decided not to release their huge title during the holiday season, nope we get it three weeks afterwards. It could be worse right? There could be nothing to play at all.
Anyhow, politics aside the game is called Lost Planet and any gamer out there worth their salt will have played either the single or the multiplayer demo that has been available for download on Xbox Live for some time now. There has been plenty of hype around Capcom’s Lost Planet and whether or not it would be a killer shooter that we have been wanting ever since tasting the perfection that was Gears of War. The story is somewhat similar in both, people are bored/dying and they decide to colonize another planet, lucky for us it is a planet covered with ice. In Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions you will play as Wayne, the young army brat who has a deadly bone to pick with a few specific alien life forms. The “Extreme Conditions” part of the title is not just for games, it is literal for the type of environment you will play in. While there is lots of snow and ice, there are the occasional inside levels as well, one example of this is that of an Alien “Hive”, referring to the so-called base environment of these alien snow bugs.
Throughout the game there will be many moments that make you say wow, moreover there are many times that your character could easily face death from a number of evil sources. These evils are mainly a sort of hybrid between alien and predator. They are not full on aliens from the deep, but they are far from human source material too. Capcom also pulled out some more tricks from their “bag o’ weapons”, no not as many as Dead Rising but this game has some cool guns. Everything from a machine gun to the shotgun is available for use. Mixing action with mech-style, Lost Planet throws in full usable mechs for the gamer to slaughter Akrid bugs with. These robots, known in the Lost Planet universe as “Vs” can be entered, exited, and customized, adding up to one hell of a fun time and a nice addition to the sometimes boring third-person action genre.
As I mentioned earlier your character Wayne has a personal vendetta against the Akrid and will do anything in his power to obliterate all of them from the face of this frozen planet. As with Dead Rising the storyline here is nothing to celebrate about, yes it gets the job done, but that is it, no shock factor here. That being said after a few hours with the game I really was not concerned with the storyline anymore, the action had me hooked.
Because Lost Planet is a third-person action game with a camera style that will be instantly noticeable to any gamer over the age of 10, Capcom had to really do something different to pull in gamers. Your character’s power is controlled by a normal “old-school” health bar, and what accompanies this bar is a numerical counter – the more Akrids you kill the more power you collect. Keep the countdown above zero and you are guaranteed some extra health whenever you need it. While this system is not that unique and certainly not flawless it really adds to the game and kept me playing for countless hours. Not having to worry about my health bar for 90% of the time I was playing the game is a great thing for any action title. It also speeds up the pace and makes you feel as if you are in control of
Wayne, not the other way around.
